For a movie about a guy with memory loss, Total Recall seems awfully familiar — and not just because it’s a remake of Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 cult-classic hyper-violent action adaptation of author Philip K. Dick’s short story “We can Remember It for You Wholesale”. Written by Kurt Wimmer (Equilibrium) and directed by Len Wiseman (the Underworld series), it rehashes its predecessor without bringing in much of anything new.
Colin Farrell replaces Arnold Schwarzenegger in the lead role of Douglas Quaid, an unhappy 22nd-century factory worker who opts to have false memories of life as a secret agent planted in his head by Rekall Inc., a company that specializes in such virtual vacations. The thing is, Quaid appears to actually have been a secret agent whose memories have already been tampered with.